


This House No Longer Feels Like Home

by Softchelles



Category: Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Far from home speculation, a little bit of language, how I think the bridge scene could go down
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-25
Updated: 2018-09-25
Packaged: 2019-07-17 10:46:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16094096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Softchelles/pseuds/Softchelles
Summary: “I thought I was meeting you at the carnival?”“Well, you thought wrong.”ORPeter and MJ take a walk





	This House No Longer Feels Like Home

**Author's Note:**

> It’s the middle of the night and I typed this up on my phone because it wouldn’t stop playing in my head. No real editing. No real structure. A hot mess. Don’t @ me (unless it’s to talk about these losers, in which case I made a Twitter today just to talk about them. Catch me @softchelles)

The elevator doors opened, and the last thing Peter expected to see was Michelle. But he hadn’t expected her to want to see him at all. They were supposed to go to dinner, just the two of them, almost like some sort of date. He kind of wanted it to be some sort of date. But he got a little sidetracked, tracking down some maniac with a self given nickname and cheesy super villain cosplay. The guy had been popping up all over the place. Maybe it had something to do with his weird, mysterious powers. Huh. Probably why he called himself Mysterio.

Regardless, Peter was constantly having to chase after him, which was constantly pulling him away from his friends— pulling him away from her. He couldn’t blame her if she never wanted to speak to him again. But when he had texted her, asking for another chance, an opportunity to make it up to her, she obliged. Much to his surprise, she had responded. Told him to meet her at the carnival, and he had quickly changed out of his suit, throwing on the first pair of pants he could find and slipping into his old NASA tee shirt before racing downstairs.

He was definitely not expecting to see her, standing there, wearing the pretty floral dress he knows she got from the thrift shop on 74th, because he had been there with May, dropping off old clothes that didn’t fit anymore thanks to the muscles that came from his new side gig as friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. He had turned an aisle and bumped into her, quite literally. The excessive apologies had fallen from his lips before he even realized it was her. It was only when she cut him off, “it’s fine, dork. Just be careful next time.” that he realized he knew her.

He barely knew her then.  
But that was then.  
This was now, months later. They’d grown from acquaintances, team mates, to friends— with the potential for more hanging loosely in the air. 

“I thought I was meeting you at the carnival?” It was a statement, but it doubled as a question. 

“Well you thought wrong,” Michelle answered flatly. “Let’s go.” 

Before he had a chance to respond, she was turning on her heels and walking through the doors of the hotel lobby. She didn’t bother to look over her shoulder to make sure he was following, but of course he was. He’d follow her anywhere, and maybe she knew that. They walked in silence for a few minutes, at least in comparison to the noise around them. The ambiance of the carnival— the laughs, the screams, the music— grew louder as they got closer, and closer, and closer, until they were there. Then, for some reason, she kept walking. And he kept following, noticing as the festival’s noises grew softer and softer the further away they walked. “Uh, MJ?” he finally broke the silence. She paused at the edge of the bridge, still not turning to face him. He cleared his throat and tried again. “I think we missed a turn. The carnival’s back that way.”

“I’m exactly where I want to be,” she replied. He was taken aback. The silent treatment all the way to this bridge was deafening. He was mentally preparing for her rage— buckling down the hatches in preparation for a storm. Instead he found stillness. It twisted his stomach into anxious knots. “I know, alright? I screwed up. I know you probably have like, a million questions—“

“Just one. How did it happen?”

Peter winced, preparing for a conversation he knew was coming. He’d known it was coming for a while. There was a part of him that knew, that had known for a while, that Michelle knew his secret. How could she not? She was smart like that. Observant. It just had never come up, until now. “How did what happen?” He feigned innocence.

“Don’t bullshit me, Parker.” There was no hidden warmth in the name, like there usually is when she says it. Usually, she uses names like ‘loser’, ‘dork’, ‘nerd’, and there was always something hidden inside, an underlying message of affection. There’s none of that now. There was actually nothing. Her voice was completely void of any emotion. No anger. No rage. Nothing. “How did it happen?” she repeated. “How did you become him?”

“I—“ Peter started, scratching the skin behind his neck as an uneasiness settled over him. He hated this part— talking about it. It was, by far, the hardest week of his life. A field trip ending in a radioactive spiderbite, gaining powers, losing his uncle— it’s a lot to process. It was a story he struggled to tell in full. Even Ned had only gotten bits and pieces, and that was after months of knowing. “It’s a long story, alright? But I’m him, he’s me. I’ve been given this life, and I have to do something with it. I can’t just sit back and let bad things happen, not when I can stop it. That’s why I’ve been so flaky, with practice, with this whole trip, MJ, I swear. It’s not that I’m not wanting to be there, it’s just, there’s been so much going on, this guy with a fishbowl and—“

“How. Did. It. Happen?” she repeated, dark eyes glaring into his. Their usual twinkle, the brightness that makes him feel like she’s the sun and he’ll get burned if he stares too long— was gone. A blank, empty void stared back. 

“A spider, a radioactive spider. It bit me and I got these powers and I’ve been—“

“Are there others?”

“What, no. The spider’s dead— I’m—it’s just me.“

“So there are no more? You’re the first and last one? Do you believe they could replicate the formula?”

“I’m not really—“ he shook his head, trying to follow where this conversation had gone. This was not at all how he expected this to go down. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go down. He had pictured this conversation a thousand different ways, because they spent enough time together. At this point he knew her. She was a light in the darkness. She felt like home. But this situation, this outcome, was so far off from what he expected. He prepared for anger, he prepared for teasing, he prepared for and endless list of questions. But not this much obsession over one small piece of the big picture. “What’s going on with you?”

“Could the formula be replicated? Injected into others to recreate your mutation in other test subjects?”

“Michelle...” 

“Answer me. Could that happen? With your help, is that possible?”

And suddenly, it clicked. Like the light switch being shut off, pulling him abruptly away from from the brightness and into the darkness. He was suddenly aware of just how dark it was, just how dark she was. Her eyes, her demeanor, everything about her, so alarmingly off. Not in her usual off way— the kind of cool, collected, quirkiness he’d grown so accustomed to. No, this wasn’t it. 

His eyes widened as he took a step back.

“You’re not her...” 

At that moment, the distant sounds of the carnival shifted. A space previously filled with joyous laughter was ripped apart by screams of terror. 

Her lips curled into a tight smirk.


End file.
